“Well, we’ve all done our best,” commented McMasters.
Nabours looked at him dourly.
“Ef we wasn’t broke,” said he, “you couldn’t of done as much as I’ve let you. Anyhow I didn’t take all the beans and molasses you sont up—there’s half in your wagon yet, and I want you to send it back home. Besides, I won’t take no wagon from you; we got our own carts, and them’s good enough. Horses, now—why, yes, I’ll take the loan of them, fer maybe you can sell ’em north. I don’t want to hit Aberlene with a bunch of sore backs. Ef you got some horses, anywheres, why, there you are; but ef you’ve et up all the chuck, why, where are you? We maybe couldn’t never pay that back—I don’t know. So you jest send you own wagon back home while you got it.”
“Well, all right,” replied McMasters, slightly changing color. “You know, of course, I’m not pushing anything on you. I don’t want your employer to know anything about it. And I know you-all have done your best.”
“Yes, I reckon we have. We’re not hardly leaving a hen wrangler at Del Sol—taking the whole force and family and most of the furniture, down to Miss Taisie’s trunk. Buck Talley, our Senegambian chief, he’d of died if he hadn’t got to go on as cook. Milly can drive one carreta, and old Anita don’t know nothing better’n to set on the seat of a carreta and talk Spanish to them oxens. Ef we don’t make Aberlene it’s because there ain’t no Aberlene. Here we come, forty-five hundred cows, ef ye don’t mind calling ’em that, sixteen more or less human cow hands, nineteen kinds of rifles and six-shooters, a hundred and fifteen saddle ponies and the only red-headedest boss in all Texas, which is a girl. God bless our home!
“Speaking of hair, did either of you-all ever notice Miss Taisie’s sort of hair?” he demanded, suddenly turning.
McMasters made no comment. Del Williams only looked at Nabours.
“Well, you see, her hair is plumb long and plumb straight, except at the far end it curls up, like a drake’s tail. You see that? You know what that means? Well, any woman that has hair like that can practice magic. I read that in a dream book oncet. Them sort is witches, and it’s no manner of use trying to stop ’em. That’s what the book said. Living along twenty-two year with Miss Taisie, taking out three I spent in the war, I’m here to say the book didn’t tell no lie. So here we all are, sixteen fools that can’t no ways help theirselves, all along of the boss having that kind of red hair that curls up on the end. Well, like you say, we all done our best. I can’t look fifty horses and two wagons of grub in the mouth—not yet.
“Del, ride back and tell the boys to throw the herd all closter to the road chute. Let’s get as many as we can in the iron before she gets too dark to work. We’ll put half at roping and branding on the flat and the balance can work ’em through the chute.”
The three turned toward the dust cloud where the main herd was held by the men. A rider was coming out, top speed.